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Cataclysm
Cataclysm Five fell screaming. Engrad put his boot to the man’s back and wrenched the greatsword from the man’s shattered torso, then swung back down. He felt his rage explode from his heart, burning across his skin. Cataclysm crashed down upon the man like earthquakes tearing through cities, stones falling from the sky, plagues ripping across populations. He had mastered his rage, with bloody knuckles and sore muscles, thousands of hours of meditation through physical punishment had compressed Engrad’s rancor into a razor’s edge. In seven thundering heartbeats, the man before him was unmade. He couldn’t feel the blood on his face, but he knew it matted his thick blond beard as he swung the blade in a crimson arc around him. People were screaming. A young man in a guard’s uniform pointed at the blood soaked demon with piercing blue eyes, and Engrad shouted his fury back at him. “MOVE.” He whipped his sword around himself, and the crowd parted as though he were casting a spell and the iron blade of Cataclysm were his wand. He made eye contact with the guardsman. “Or fight me.” His words chopped with the same brutality as his blade. The guard’s speech caught in his throat, and he and his two companions stepped with the crowd. Engrad walked through to an alley, jumping first onto a trash can and then hopping and grabbing the ledge of a roof, pulling himself on top of a building. He began to jog across the rooftops and then slowed to a walking pace. He had run in the past, but no one had ever chased him. He looked over his shoulder. The crowd had quieted. Bloody footprints marked his path. As they always would. Being an assassin was easy. Or so he had thought. Five had been too many. Engrad’s face was drawn, to his pleasure, with blood smeared across it upon parchment and stapled to the inner wall of the Eldest Vix Church with the words “Wanted for murder by the Arnish Marshals. Reward in gold, dead or alive” underneath it. Botard had not been pleased. While Engrad had kept a low profile among the Vix, the Soan barbarian was impossible not to notice. An investigation had been launched, and the official story had been that Engrad had always been unstable foreigner and left the Church shortly before his fifth murder. He hid now in the basement, lying back in his cot and contemplating his situation. Botard had told him that Unquala had lit his path. That he was chosen. Engrad didn’t doubt this. But he had begun to doubt the Head of Arkrest. His first four targets had all been criminals, three of them among the Laughing Skulls. This one had been a lawyer. When he had given his suspicion to Botard that perhaps he was being punished for not serving the Black Lady properly, Botard had laughed and said it was inevitable for him to be caught, carrying out the killings with “all the grace of a cripple’s parade.” Still, Engrad sat and thought. He watched. Listened. He witnessed the rapid growth of the Vix Agarra, their ravenous expansion of territory both in the hearts and stomachs of the common folk of Larkenvale and in captured territory from the Laughing Skulls and other gangs. It almost frightened him, how quickly so many men accepted the dictum that they preached. The amount of power the Vix, and Botard, had so quickly acquired had changed and shaken him. His soul cried out, in shock from the difference between this new world and the simplicity of life in Soa. His instincts fought against the politics that had grown around him, and his hands twitched to grip his sword. When he paid heed to his heart and it had made him hurt, he had spoken to other Vix leaders. Laesya had told him that instincts were meant to be conquered, and Botard had claimed that Engrad heard the voice of Unquala in his heart. He said that the prophet, Illiv Cell, had taught that men must follow their hearts. Engrad felt like Botard was right. But Unquala’s voice had been telling him to kill his comrades for some time now.